Digital Britain?

Figure 3: Percentage of bad lines in Great Britain

Digital Britain?

2000 - 2005 - 2010 - 2012 - 2020

From the copper cage,

to Maxwell's Rainbow?

Digital Rights?

Inspecting the packets.

Or, don't tax the copper,

incentivize the fibre?

ofcom

• The Digital Britain report [Exec summary]
• The Digital Britain report [Full version]
• Digital Britain Impact Assessments

Building Britain's Future - New Industry, New Jobs

A strategic plan to invest in Britain's economic and industrial future was launched by the Government today

20 April 2009

(...)

• a coherent strategy for making sure Britain has the modern infrastructure and networks, from energy to broadband, that will be the foundation of future prosperity

Monday 20 April 2009 | Building Britain’s Future – New Industry, New Jobs

The Prime Minister has launched a “strategic plan” to invest in Britain’s economic and industrial future.

• report-new_industry_new_jobs

3.31 Other important work in upgrading Britain’s infrastructure in the months ahead will include:

● the Government’s Digital Britain review, which will establish the framework for a fundamental transformation of our broadband infrastructure. The aim will be for virtually all of Britain’s homes and businesses to have access to high speed broadband within the next three years;

publictechnology.net

· Digital Britain Report: Government plans a 21st century knowledge economy (Jun 17, 2009)
· Gordon Brown says: "The internet is as vital as water and gas" (Jun 17, 2009)
· Digital Britain Report: Read the exec summary here [part 1 of 2]… (Jun 17, 2009)
· Digital Britain Report: Read the exec summary here [part 2 of 2]… (Jun 17, 2009)
· Digital Britain Report: Government consults on next steps to take… (Jun 17, 2009)
· Digital Britain Report: Directgov responds & says it's up to the challenge (Jun 17, 2009)

Google news search

• Digital Britain report

guardian.co.uk | Digital Britain report: few surprises, many fudges – but a new era has begun

(...)

Broadband for all

The report gives more details about how the government aims to provide universal access to a minimum 2Mb broadband connection, the so-called Universal Service Commitment. Part of the budget will come from money left over from the BBC's fund to help people switch to digital TV by 2012, with private partners and public sector bodies among other sources of funding.

An estimated 2.75m homes, about 11% of UK households, today have no access to a connection at this speed. The report says 1.5m households might get access to next-generation broadband as a result of the commitment. For Carter 2Mb was a "technological minimum wage". He adds: "We are not specifying a ceiling, we are specifying a floor."

Reaction Jeremy Hunt, the shadow culture secretary, welcomed the commitment to universal broadband, but said the report was a "digital dithering from a dated government".

Broadband tax

Landline users will pay £6 a year towards the rollout of superfast broadband, with the surplus from the BBC's digital switchover help scheme helping to meet the £200m annual cost of providing universal access.

The government wants everyone to be able to receive broadband of at least 2Mbps by 2012 as it puts more public services online. It is anxious that remote or underserved parts of the country are not left behind when "next generation" broadband is built.

A 50p a month charge on the UK's copper lines to help upgrade the fixed-line network, a project on which BT and Virgin Media have already embarked, will raise up to £175m a year to extend next-generation broadband to the "final third" of the country the market will not reach.

Carter acknowledges that the levy will hit consumers already feeling the pinch. "How will the public react? We will find out," he said. "Our view as a government is that it's a good exercise of judgment."

Reaction For the Tories, Hunt says: "The cable revolution happened without a cable tax. The satellite revolution happened without a satellite tax. Everyone recognises that public investment may be necessary to reach more remote parts of the country - but simply slapping on an extra tax is an old economy solution to a new economy problem."

(...)

Digital Britain: More fudge than foresight

Leader ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 16 Jun 2009 18:32 BST

If the economic events of the past 18 months have done much harm, they have also done some good.

The government now feels able to announce a tax-and-spend approach to funding the UK's next-generation broadband, with a 50p annual tax on fixed telephone lines going towards funding fast broadband for one-third of the country. While not the exuberant nationalisation we have proposed in the past, it's a solid and useful commitment towards universal service.

The rest of the report is another matter. Had the economy been kinder, we could perhaps have compared it to Woolworths Pick 'n' Mix. Broadband access is an essential right and a unrivalled conduit for learning, self-improvement and economic growth, yet the business ideas of the analogue generation are still to be allowed to squeeze that access in support of antiquated distribution and control.

"Digital" is the hero, but the heroics quoted — the web, the internet, digital music and video — would be nothing without the essential catalyst of open standards. But on this point, there is almost nothing said. Perhaps a word count give the strongest clue to Digital Britain's subconscious: in 245 pages, 'open standard' gets six hits, the same as "Microsoft". "Security" gets 69. Yet the speed advantages of next-generation broadband are illustrated by "an entire Star Wars DVD in three minutes" — illegal under any circumstances.

The overall tone of the report is of an earnest, with-it vicar, full of pious hopes and vague plans but desperately short of real engagement with the real world. Again, textual analysis helps. The verbs following the phrase "The government will..." are long on wishes, short on action: "signal", "consult", "enable", "pursue", "review", "support", "monitor", "expedite", "resolve", "facilitate", "encourage", "take account". We must be good and accept "free from" as well as "free to", or else Ofcom will write us a nasty letter — the modern, atheist equivalent of demonic possession.

As a collection of nice-enough ideas and right-direction guidance,Digital Britain holds up. As a solid plan of action, with proper milestones, testable commitments and a coherent vision, it falls down. As a revolutionary document, recognising the fundamental seachange in rights and responsibilities conferred by the biggest upset in intellectual affairs since literacy, it doesn't even twitch the meter.

Yet that may save us. This portmanteau puddingstone of indigestible bureaucracy leaves enough room for the true major driving force of Digital Britain to continue: our ability to take this stuff and do with it what we consider right.

bbc.co.uk | Engaging with the internet | The Digital Britain report offers a lot to work with, says Bill Thompson.

[ and Digital Britain: Engaging with the Internet

Posted by bill under billblog ]

(...)

The report comes on a day when the importance of the internet and the services it supports has been drawn to the attention of the whole world.

The protests over the election results in Iran have depended on Facebook, YouTube and of course Twitter to get their message to the world, put pressure on their own government and organise their activities.

Just last week the French Constitutional Council of France halted the government's plans to give a new authority the ability to cut the network access of internet users accused of copyright violations because "the internet is a component of the freedom of expression".

In the UK the Prime Minister Gordon Brown wrote in the The Times today that "a fast internet connection is now seen by most of the public as an essential service, as indispensable as electricity, gas and water."

Locking content

The view of the network as a utility and as a tool for expression is a very different one from that put forward by the dominant players in the so-called 'content industry'.

Record companies, film studios, newspapers and the TV broadcasters have all lobbied hard for the UK government to shape its internet policy around their interests.

They want copyright laws to be strengthened so they can lock up any and all content. They want anyone who dares to challenge their business to be kicked offline, fined and locked up. They want a world in which they control what can happen.

Fortunately that pressure seems largely to have been resisted, and the real thrust of the proposals is about getting everyone online and ensuring that the network is there to be used in ways that support creative expression, new forms of industry and new models of engagement.

(...)

Networked world

A digital Britain is not one in which we are all sitting glued to our screens watching the same sort of television programming that we could have had on a cathode-ray set in the 1970's, downloading blockbuster movies or listening to more dull music made by rich popstars whose only real interest is their property portfolio.

It is one in which universal access allows us all to be fully-fledged citizens of a networked world that offers opportunities for creative expression and communication instead of the passive consumption of packaged content. There's a glimpse of that world through the Digital Britain report, and it is one that those of us who already live a networked life need to clarify, share and work to build.

• More / The digital age of rights

paidcontent.co.uk | Digital Britain Scorecard: So How Did Lord Carter Do? | Robert Andrews

(...)

—Super-fast broadband - 7/10: Despite focusing precious little in January on the next-generation networks that will truly accelerate UK connectivity speeds, Digital Britain has hit on a creative way to encourage telco investment in speedier infrastructure for the same people currently missing out on 2Mbps. Charging a £0.50 per month levy on the old, copper phone wires may be interpreted by some as a “tax”, but the telcos need incentives to make the investment and the proceeds could be bid for by any operator to part-subsidise their next-gen roll-out. With 17.3 million residential broadband lines in use at the end of 2008, this could generate over £103.8 million per year - but it will be much more by the time the fund is created in 2010.

Wireless plans

dslprime.com Obama's Unbelievable But True Wireless Plans

Wednesday, 24 December 2008 03:25

Doubling available spectrum is practical and top of agenda for Obama's tech people.  Changes considered "unthinkable" by most of D.C. actually will be accepted as obvious common sense soon. Giving a particular use exclusive control creates a monopoly, justified because there was no alternative. Technology has changed. Monopolies can mostly be thrown away, with some sensible rules of the road enforced by today's chips. They want to raise U.S. policy once again to the most advanced in the world, and getting rid of most wireless limits is pretty much agreed.  They are busy right now trying to head off the tens of billions in waste and ripoff in the current stimulus plans, possibly a hopeless struggle but worth the effort. The goal is to "create" as much spectrum as practical, taking advantage of improved technology and leadership that understands the issues. Decisions will probably wait until after the team is in place and organized, but here are some ideas under discussion: 1) 95% of spectrum is typically unused at any given time and location. There is no spectrum shortage today, if only obsolete practices where eliminated. I learned this from Dave Farber, who a decade ago was "testing the air" and showing everyone that there was no signal in most bands, even in major cities.  This is what deregulation should be about: getting bad rules out of the way, such as unnecessary restrictions on what can be done with wireless connections. In the last seven years, evidence spectrum can be used much more intensively has convinced the FCC Technical Advisory Committee and nearly every expert not in the sway of D.C. lobbyists. 2) The first solution: sharing spectrum to get maximum use. In the 1930's, when the rules were laid out for radio, receivers were primitive, interference rejection almost non-existent, transmitters couldn't be precisely tuned, and the technology to share spectrum not even a dream. In the last decade, a billion cell phone users have conclusively demonstrated sharing is possible; almost all wireless networks massively reuse the same frequency. WiFi is a second demonstration, with hundreds od millions using "unlicensed" spectrum fairly effectively. Not all the problems are solved, but ir works and the benefits are far greater than the (relatively few) problems that arise.  Most can be controlled by setting strict parameters for what chips are allowed, rather than active (and generally feeble) enforcement. Very few chips get into widespread use, so it's practical to test each rigorous for effectively avoiding serious interference. I'm writing this on a Mac over WiFi; problems are very few. Kevin Werbach, on the Obama FCC transition team, has been proselytizing about the potential since 2001, crediting work last century by Columbia's Eli Noam. 3) Cell phones and other transmitters are now capable of testing a possible frequency and (reasonably accurately) determining whether it's in use. If it's in use, they try a different frequency. This is called "cognitive radio," "spectrum sensing," "software defined radio"and various other geeky names. Basically, it's about finding whatever is available and putting it to use. This should effectively make twice as much spectrum available, possibly even five times as much. (Article to come: Getting out of the way: How Cognitive Radio Changes the Game.) 4) The first rule changes from "absolutely no interference" to "minimal harm." The first regulatory breakthrough was "ultra wideband," which was supported by Mike Powell and Robert Pepper at the FCC. Low power transceivers can use up to 500 megahertz of spectrum, effectively carrying several hundred megabits from a controller to an HD TV,  etc.  As a practical matter, there's minimal interference on the (much higher power) primary signal. Similarly, TV and radio receivers today can reject low levels of interference, allowing closer allocation of TV transmitters, etc.  Instead of saying "No interference is allowed, ever," sharing is allowed if it doesn't create major problems for others. Rural areas will be particularly aided, because they have more spectrum "allocated" but not actually used. In more than half the state of Vermont's land area, at least four wireless carriers control the spectrum but aren't using it. That's a great opportunity for some local entrenpreneur to provide service where Verizon and AT&T just aren't interested. 5) The second rule may be "use it or lose it," common in many other countries. France has threatened to cancel Iliad's license if Xavier Neil doesn't rapidly build the promised 3.5 megahertz WiMax network promised; several third and fourth 3G licenses have been reclaimed because the networks weren't built, with the hope the spectrum can be offered to a company which will build. I have a friend with 700 MHz spectrum across an entire state who hasn't done anything with it for almost a decade. It  has mountainous terrain with low population density, and he couldn't see a profitable way to compete with Verizon and AT&T's offerings in the major cities. Verizon bought the "C" block across the U.S. in the 2007 aucion, although it doesn't need the spectrum for years. The consensus was they spent $4.5B primarily to keep out a possible competitor. "Use it or lose it" is also particularly potent in rural areas, where carriers have done less buildout. 6) Require full deployment for ten year license renewals. After ten years to recover the original investment, it's perfectly reasonablw to expect continued investment in the second ten years. Most U.S. spectrum licenses sold make clear the FCC has the absolute authority to set terms for the renewal license. The bidding documents not only make that clear, they even provide details on the process the FCC must use for public comment on the changed rules, etc. This is by far the best way to get better coverage in rural areas and higher speeds everywhere, because it costs the taxpayer absolutely nothing. Most of the spectrum was given for free but now is valued in the billions, about $50B worth on the balance sheet of the Bells. Verizon would be have to be stupid not to accept whatever renewal terms are set. They aren't stupid. In this way, over 5-8 years the country can receive any reasonable deployment level or speed/quality desired, without stimulus or any other spending. (Note the term reasonable. It is right for the commission to require buildout, and they shouldn't demand unrealistic goals.) 7) Increase  competition by limiting the access of incumbents to any new spectrum. Canada reserved half the recently concluded auction spectrum for new entrants, and will likely see two or three new competitors that way. They broke records in what they received. Even if keeping out incumbents results in lower totals (unproven and probably unlikely,) consumers will more than make up the difference in lower prices. 8) Increase competition by reducing all costs involved in a wireless network. India requires any wireless company building a tower to share it with 3 competitors (in some regions.) This results in two or three companies competing for customers. Similarly, the backhaul costs from the tower can be brought down by sensible rules on pricing. Japan's broadband competition is possibly the most competitive in the world, with prices/speeds much better than the U.S. Requiring the incumbent to provide fiber backhaul at a fair price was crucial. Verizon and AT&T control over 70% of the backhaul in the U.S., giving them a crucial advantage over everyone else, especially as speeds increase and more backhaul is required. (An interim step would be to eliminate the "cell tower exclusion" and make copper pairs available at standard rates.) 9) Increase effecive spectrum by requiring more efficient use of existing spectrum. It;s a cliche that "you can't manufacture more spectrum," but a total fallacy.  3G technologies use half the bandwidth for each voice call, meaning AT&T could double the voice capacity on exsting spectrum by moving everyone to 3G in the next few years. Europe is actively putting this to work, calling it re-farming. Another way to reduce spectrum required is building more cell sites.  Sharing tower costs (directly or through an independent tower company) makes that cheaper. So would eliminating the typical 800% markup on T-1 backhaul, as above. Techniques like that allow the incumbents to meet their needs without needing more spectrum, freeing spectrum for other uses.

Death of the Telcos

dslprime.com | 

Death of the Telcos

Monday, 27 April 2009 17:15

“We are a wireless company,” Randall Stephenson's first major public comment as AT&T CEO. He decided in 2003 to let the copper phone network slowly die. Repeat: Randall in 2003 decided to let the copper phone network slowly die. AT&T is seriously disinvesting from the landline business, after cutting capital spending in half. I know that's hard to believe, but his cold equations are clear. Landline decline is inevitable, Randall now tells the WSJ, and there’s no point trying to fight it. “You could try to hold back the tide,” he said, “but that’s a very frustrating proposition. Or you could say, let’s get ahead of the market, let’s get ahead of the mobility curve. We have 77 million wireless customers and 30 million consumer phone lines. Which customer base would you rather work from?” He's losing 3M customers a year, almost ten percent of what's left. Eircom is talking about not being able to pay its debts. Windstream went from junk to junker. Hawaiian Tel is bankrupt, and Fairpoint close. Nearly all the other U.S. RLECs fail without a wildly excessive subsidy. No copper network is unaffected, and not all are following Verizon's upgrade path.  I am not saying AT&T is going broke - the DSL and wireless part of the business has been increasing profits. I'm talking the PSTN - the public switched telephone network. Letting the phone network die may or may not be the right choice for the company profits. We won't know until we see the results of widescale DOCSIS 3.0 deployments in 2010-2012. Most of the industry thinks Verizon is right, and AT&T will be clobbered because cablecos have some great technology coming. Saul Hansell at the NY Times calls AT&T's choice "harvest mode" and anyone who cares about the U.S. economy will be unhappy. It's incredibly cold-blooded to let a $50B/year and 50,000 jobs business go away, but Randall is paid $20M to make tough decisions. This means, of course, that any "incentives" to invest or “broadband stimulus” will simply be collected from the government and passed out the other door to shareholders. So will most of the money from any price increases allowed or favorable changes in ICC and USF. "Facilities-based" wireline competition cannot be good policy, because no one will build a new network in a declining industry. Wireless has speed limits that make it only a partial substitute. The Pony Express was the best way to send a message to California until the telegraph came in 1861. It died almost immediately, but the death of wireline phones will take 10-20 years. People have bonded with mobile phones, unwilling even to walk across the room to make a call. The mobile is as much a friend as the person calling. Subscribers are dropping even at mighty China Telecom. The hundreds of million Chinese unconnected will go mobile. Most telephone companies in the west will lose half their lines in the next decade if present trends continue. (part one)

The $Billion Wireless Study No One Knows

dslprime.com | The $Billion Wireless Study No One Knows | 29 March 2009

The House stimulus bill included $B for wireless, a major surprise because most of the public advocates where thinking the money would go for fiber and landline subsidies. One key reason is that a CTIA study on "ubiquitous 3G wireless" was circulated around the transition team, along with a comment that spending perhaps a quarter of the stimulus money on wireless towers would be by far the most effective use of the money. 

(...) 

The world is going mobile, so ensuring wireless everywhere is good public policy. A wireless build is much cheaper and faster than rural fiber/coax, and is a natural complement. I believe 50+ meg to every home is worthwhile while LTE and WiMAX speeds will typically be 2-10 meg. We need both.

Stimulus money is one way to make this happen, but the FCC's Adelstein has a proposal that doesn't require public money:"Use It Or Lose It" wireless licensing. By far the least expensive and most sensible way to get near universal service with voice and megabit wireless and a pretty obvious step forward. When wireless licenses come up for renewal, require that the operator actually is servicing the territory. Perhaps require 92% population coverage for the first renewal, about the current U.S. average. Raise that to 98% coverage for the second renewal, with very limited exceptions. Since U.S. wireless licenses are typically 10 years and most territories have several, in a few years 98+% would be covered without a penny of government subsidy. 

The “People's Cellphone”

dslprime.com | 15 May 2009

Hugo Chavez and his nationalized CANTV are ecstatic about the immediate sellout of the new $15 phone with camera, MP3, and much more. It is “light, beautiful, good and cheap.” With a serious inflation problem hurting Chavez's base among the poor, the cheap cellphone is a welcome symbol of a success for the Bolivarian Revolution. Hugo has teamed with China's ZTE for a dramatic symbol of what Venezuela can do after pushing out Verizon.

“This telephone will be the biggest seller not only in Venezuela but the world. Whoever doesn't have a Vergatario is nothing. ... It is science and technology at the service of the people not the elites ... the day will arrive when we manufacture phones for Cuba and Latin America.” (Google translation)

Two years ago Chavez pushed Verizon and the Mexicans out of CANTV, creating an international incident. U.S. folks swore the Venezuelans couldn't run a phone company, so it became a point of pride for Chavez to do well. Profits at CANTV and Mo are up, prices down, market share increasing, and Venezuela is one of the few countries in the world with major growth in landlines. History will tell us whether that's a side effect of the oil boom, smart policy, good management or a mirage. Authoritarian states can do well – China, Malaysia, Singapore – so the question of government form and economic growth is unanswered.

I've no direct data, but $15 is so low I suspect there is some subsidy along the way. 

Ofcom report - Licence Exempt Spectrum Bands

Estimating the Utilisation of Key Licence Exempt Spectrum Bands (here )

There is anecdotal information and discussion that WiFi systems are highly congested in cities and are failing to work in certain locations. We commissioned the design of a novel monitoring system based on smartphone devices with GPS and WiFi capabilities. These were then carried around city centres, including into a number of buildings such as railway stations, where they monitored key beacon signals transmitted from WiFi networks and measured performance parameters. A test network was also built in the laboratory to try to replicate the measurements made.

(...) 

ABSTRACT

A survey of IEEE 802.11b/g 'WiFi' usage has been carried out at various urban locations in

the UK. This has revealed a wide variety of problems encountered by users, many of which

are due to causes other than spectrum issues. These include problems with the wired

Internet and device configuration errors.

Where the users' problems are spectrum-related they tend to be due to interference between

devices in the 2.4 GHz ISM band rather than congestion, as was initially believed. (...) 

===

Ofcom today published three independent reports on spectrum use, availability and interference. The reports can be found here:

 

·               Capture of Spectrum Utilisation Information using Moving Vehicles: http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/technology/research/state_use/vehicles/

·               Estimating the Utilisation of Key Licence-Exempt Spectrum Bands: http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/technology/research/exempt/wifi/

·               Wide-range propagation model: http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/technology/research/prop/wrpm/

A “Capability Brown” of spectrum

A Note on Spectrum Management Policy

Property and Commons models? Or, Garden Design.

Forget the "open spectrum" or "spectrum commons" Blue Skies thinking. Ofcom's philosophy remains firmly planted in the ground of the market-place. The sanctity of the commercial real- estate model. Well, it's more a landed Country Estate really. 

Consider this colourful proposal for a "Capability Brown" broker for spectrum in the market place; in response to 3 years of failure for "substantial spectrum trading" to materialize. Seems we need a "Lions of Longleat" factor to stimulate that spectrum trading? 

[1] 

Ofcom Spectrum Advisory Board. Annual Report 2007 - 2008 [ here x ] 

(...)  In addition, a theme underlying much of OSAB’s discussion during the year was whether there was more that could be done to promote a market in spectrum and to stimulate innovation and investment. Here OSAB stressed the possible need for a “Capability Brown” of spectrum – intermediaries or brokers who could show stakeholders the potential for spectrum they might acquire through auction or in the marketplace in the same way that the landscape gardener Capability Brown was able to show landowners the potential for improvement in their gardens.

[2]
OSAB 19(08)       MINUTES OF THE NINETEENTH  MEETING OF THE OFCOM SPECTRUM ADVISORY BOARD HELD ON MONDAY 21 JANUARY 2008 AT 1.00PM IN ROOM 11.02, RIVERSIDE HOUSE. [ here x ] 

(...)  Item 3: OSAB Annual Workshop and meeting with the Ofcom board 

 
A note of the OSAB Annual Workshop had been circulated with the agenda papers.   
The Chairman, Phillipa Marks, Simon Saunders and Peter Swann had attended the November meeting of the Ofcom Board to report on the work carried out by OSAB over the last six months and to address the question why, after a period of  three years, there was still no substantial spectrum trading.   This had also been a subject considered at the Annual Workshop amongst which the following had been identified:  

a need for a possible change in the business model 

the possibilities for involvement of intermediaries such as brokers, band managers or ‘Capability Browns’ to show businesses the potential uses for spectrum 

possible problems with public sector rules resulting in inefficient spending

In Conversation: John Cale

Image source X

[1]

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/dec/12/john-cale-venice-biennale

Cale to represent art of Wales | Mark Brown, arts correspondent | The Guardian, Friday 12 December 2008

He is better known as a founder of the Velvet Underground, and his Glastonbury performance this summer was described as "genuinely unhinged". Yesterday it was announced that John Cale will represent Wales at the most important showcase of contemporary art, the Venice Biennale.

Cale was born in the Carmarthenshire mining village of Garnant and after studying music at Goldsmiths College he travelled to New York, where he founded the Velvet Underground with Lou Reed. He went on to collaborate with artists such as Patti Smith, the Stooges and Happy Mondays, as well as having a solo career.

Cale said he was "surprised and honoured" to be invited to represent Wales. He added, intriguingly: "It offers an occasion to address certain pernicious issues in my background that had lain dormant for so long. There are certain experiences uniquely suited to the exorcism of mixed media and I am grateful for this opportunity to address them."

Cale's work will be a collaboration with artists, film-makers and poets. Communication and Cale's relationship with the Welsh language would be at the work's centre, the Arts Council of Wales said.

Alun Ffred Jones, heritage minister in the Welsh assembly, said: "John Cale is a bard in the widest sense - an artistic craftsman, whose work is firmly rooted in Wales's cultural history."

[2]

Source: http://blogger.xs4all.nl/werksman/archive/2009/04/20/467024.aspx

John Cale: interview at the National Gallery, London May 15th | Posted on Monday, April 20, 2009 4:27 PM

John Cale will be interviewed at the National Gallery, London on the 15 May 2009 as part of the Museums at Night weekend about his installation for the Venice Biennale.

In Conversation: John Cale | Velvet Underground co-founder John Cale is representing Wales at this year's Venice Biennale, where he will be showing a much-anticipated mixed-media installation. In this informal conversation, he will talk about his work for Venice and discuss the connections between art and music. With Colin Wiggins. (...)

[3]  

/ more 

/ more 

X

Broadband - Wales (again)

http://www.techwatch.co.uk/2009/04/24/broadband-essential-for-wales/

April 24, 2009

Broadband essential for Wales

by David Allen 

 For most broadband users the ability to shop, bank and even watch on-demand television has become a way of life, no matter what the connection speed.

Yet in Wales there are rural areas where broadband is not available at all.

The communications minister, Lord Carter’s, Digital Britain plan calls for the entire UK to have 2 Mbps broadband by 2012, which means that at least there is the prospect of getting broadband in the future.

However, Lord Carter has now conceded that not all of Britain will be getting the minimum standard 2 Mbps broadband by 2012, and this includes rural Wales.

In fact, Lord Carter has said that there could be around thirty per cent of the country where super fast broadband is not practical.

So going on those figures, if Virgin Media and BT have fifty per cent of the UK connected to fibre, thirty per cent cannot have fibre and that leaves just twenty per cent of the country to be connected by 2012.

Samuel Morse

itpro.co.uk |Today in history: Happy birthday Samuel Morse | The creator of Morse code and the single wire telegraph was born on this day back in 1791.| By Maggie Holland, 27 Apr 2009 at 09:45

Today marks the birthday of the brains behind Morse code – a universal communications system that revolutionised the world as we knew it and came to be a truly enabling assistive technology for people with disabilities.

On 27 April 1791, Samuel Morse was born. He died on 2 April 1872 but packed in a great deal of innovation during his lifetime.

Initially a painter of historic scenes, Morse also had a technical brain and was responsible for creating the single wire telegraph and, most notably, Morse code.

Morse’s technical breakthrough occurred almost as a by-product of his painting enthusiasm. Following a tour of France, Italy and Switzerland from 1830-1832 to enhance his painting expertise, Morse returned to America by sea. It was during this homebound voyage that he met up with Charles Thomas Jackson who happened to be somewhat of an expert in electromagnetism.

It was observing Jackson’s electromagnetic experiments during the long journey home that Morse came up with the concept of the single wire telegraph. His painting plans – the reasoning behind the trip - were immediately put on the back burner so that he could focus his attentions solely on this new project.

Great minds think alike

However, Morse was not alone in his Eureka moment. William Cooke had also worked to create a commercial single wire telegraph and, thanks to a large pool of cash, was some way ahead of Morse in the development stakes. Professor Charles Wheatstone was also in on the action. The two paired up and patented their electrical telegraph back in May 1837.

(...)

Money makes the world go round

Greater funding was required the make the telegraph a commercial reality. That funding was clearly more likely to go to Cooke and Wheatstone in Europe, so Morse had to look closer to home.

Following a demonstration connecting two committee rooms in the US Capitol building, Morse was awarded $30,000 to build a pilot line between Washington DC and Baltimore.

The real breakthrough came as Morse used the wire back on 24 May 1844 to say: "What hath God wrought" – a message that marked the official opening of the new communications network.

The technology was patented in 1847, following legal battles regarding rightful ownership of the “inventor of the telegraph” moniker.

In 1851, Britain adopted Morse’s invention as the European telegraphy standard. The use of Morse code also became key to aviation.

The Morse code we use today has been tweaked as it based on the Modern International Morse code that was actually developed by Friedrich Clemens Gerke back in 1848.

Broadband trends - BT

itpro.co.uk | Communications giant BT has launched what it calls the UK’s cheapest home and mobile broadband bundle. | By Maggie Holland, 27 Apr 2009 at 11:07

BT has launched a new broadband package that provides both home and mobile connectivity for just over £15 a month.

Customers signed up to the company’s BT Total Broadband offering will now be able to get up to 8Mbps wireless broadband in addition to 1GB of free mobile surfing each month.

That data allowance should be enough for 300 emails, 400 minutes of web surfing plus quite a large handful of songs, according to BT – enough for a light business user or average consumer.

Those who have a larger appetite for mobile data will be able to top up their data usage levels for a fee.

To benefit from the new package, users connect using BT’s USB modem. Depending on the area they’re connecting in, some users will be able to surf the web at speeds of up to 7.2Mbps using HSDPA connectivity.

"This is an absolutely fantastic deal, the most complete home and mobile broadband for only 56p a day is a no-brainer. Now you can use broadband wherever you are without worrying about the cost,” said John Petter, managing director of BT’s consumer division, in a statement.

"You can use mobile broadband on the train, in the coffee shop or in the park for all the things you go online for, to look at your emails, check the football results, or watch Britain’s Got Talent star, Susan Boyle on YouTube."

Customers can also opt for BT’s standalone 1GB prepay USB modem, which costs £129.99 for 18 months. Top-up prices for this are £10 for 1GB and £20 for 3GB.

Last week BT announced that Starbucks customers could snack on Wi-Fi as well as coffee and crossiants while frequenting its stores. Wi-Fi has peaked in popularity for the communications giant of late, with it reporting that Wi-Fi usage doubled in 2008.

BT fibre announcement - FTTC, 29 exchanges

[1]

BT Press Releases | DC09-096   | March 23, 2009

BT reveals next super-fast broadband locations 

BT today took the next step on its broadband journey by revealing the first set of locations where, from early 2010, substantial numbers of customers will have access to fibre-based super-fast broadband via BT’s network. 

BT’s local access division Openreach will deploy fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) technology at 29 exchanges across the UK. This will bring speeds of up to 40Mb/s – and potentially 60Mb/s - within reach of 500,000 homes and businesses. Areas of Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London and Greater Manchester will be amongst the first locations to benefit from this initial deployment.

Whilst the majority of the locations are urban, two of them– Calder Valley (near Halifax) and Taffs Well (near Cardiff) – are not and BT will be looking to learn lessons from deploying fibre in such environments.  The next set of locations – serving a further million homes and businesses – will be announced in the Autumn.

Whilst Openreach will deploy the technology, it will be up to Communications Providers (CPs) to develop services based on that technology and to sell them to customers.
 
The roll out is the next stage in the UK’s biggest ever investment programme in super-fast broadband. BT has pledged to spend £1.5 billion by 2012 to ensure that 40% of UK homes and businesses – some 10 million premises - can access fibre-based services. The UK already leads the way in terms of DSL broadband access  and penetration  and BT’s plan will ensure the UK climbs the speed tables as well.

Steve Robertson, CEO of Openreach, the division of BT responsible for the delivery of the plans, said: “Super-fast broadband is essential to the UK’s future and so it is great to announce this initial set of locations. The wider industry will now be able to plan ahead as we will be making our services available on a wholesale basis. This approach will benefit customers as there will undoubtedly be fierce competition for their business. 

“We have worked very closely with industry and with local and regional authorities to choose these sites and I would like to thank everyone who has worked with us to make this happen. We are in discussions with many other authorities so expect many similar announcements in the months to come.  

"The regulatory picture is complex and whilst Ofcom has given us a very welcome green light, we will require a few more over the coming months. We remain confident though that Ofcom recognises the need for an environment that encourages investment"  

FTTC technology – which is being piloted this summer in Muswell Hill, London and Whitchurch, Wales in advance of the wider roll-out – will offer initial speeds of up to 40Mb/s with the prospect of those rising to up to 60Mb/s. This will give customers enough speed to run multiple bandwidth-hungry applications. For example, some members of a family could be watching different HD movies while others were gaming or working on complex graphics or video projects.  

It will also provide the best “upstream” speeds in the UK with speeds of up to 10Mb/s. These will enable customers to post videos, experience hi-definition video conferencing and enjoy interactive hi-definition gaming to the full.

Openreach will deliver FTTC services by installing fibre between local exchanges and the street cabinets that sit between those exchanges and the premises served by them. The fibre will transform the speeds available even though the last link in the chain – from the street cabinet to the premise – will remain copper. Openreach is aware there are some premises that will not be able to be served by this technology and so they are currently looking at alternative solutions for those. 

Openreach already delivers the UK’s fastest broadband speeds at Ebbsfleet in Kent where speeds of up to 100Mb are being used by customers. 
These speeds, using fibre to the premise (FTTP) technology, are substantially ahead of any other residential service in the UK. Copper-based broadband services – offering speeds of up to 24Mb/s - are also currently available to CPs from exchanges serving 40% of UK homes and business.

 

CHELMSFORD	Essex	East of England
ST. ALBANS	Hertfordshire	East of England
WATFORD	Hertfordshire	East of England
HEMEL HEMPSTEAD	Hertfordshire	East of England
LEAGRAVE	Bedfordshire	East of England
LUTON	Bedfordshire	East of England
CANONBURY	London	London
CHINGFORD	London	London
EDMONTON	London	London
ENFIELD	London	London
HIGHAMS PARK	London	London
TOTTENHAM	London	London
THAMESMEAD	London	London
WOOLWICH	London	London
BURY	Greater Manchester	North West
DIDSBURY	Greater Manchester	North West
FAILSWORTH	Greater Manchester	North West
HEATON MOOR	Greater Manchester	North West
OLDHAM	Greater Manchester	North West
RUSHOLME	Greater Manchester	North West
BELFAST BALMORAL	Belfast	Northern Ireland
DEAN	Edinburgh	Scotland
GLASGOW HALFWAY	Glasgow	Scotland
GLASGOW WESTERN	Glasgow	Scotland
CARDIFF	Cardiff	Wales
TAFFS WELL	Rhondda Cynon Taf	Wales
HALIFAX	West Yorkshire	Yorkshire and Humber
PUDSEY	West Yorkshire	Yorkshire and Humber
CALDER VALLEY	West Yorkshire	Yorkshire and Humber

[2]

itpro.co.uk | By Asavin Wattanajantra, 23 Mar 2009 at 11:27

http://www.itpro.co.uk/610272/bt-reveals-first-super-fast-broadband-sites

After the first pilots this summer, BT confirms the first areas that will be able to access super-fast fibre-optic broadband in early 2010. 

BT has revealed the first locations to receive super-fast broadband.

From early 2010, BT Openreach will deploy fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) technology at 29 exchanges across Britain.

Areas of Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London and Greater Manchester will be lucky enough to access speeds of up to 40Mbps, with the potential for that to increase to 60Mbps.

The majority of locations will be in urban areas, but BT has picked Calder Valley near Halifax and Taffs Well near Cardiff to test deployment in more isolated environments.

 

(...)

[3]

BT to create super-fast broadband network

Telegraph.co.uk - ‎15 hours ago‎

By Nic Fildes BT Group is set to roll out its super-fast broadband network to six UK cities by 2010 after ending a stand-off with Ofcom over how to regulate ...

BT announces super-fast broadband locations T3

BT rolls out super-fast broadband Belfast Telegraph

Urban areas benefit early from superfast net Times Online

TechRadar UK

all 65 news articles »

LON:BT.A

Google's pictures of UK go live

bbc.co.uk | Thursday, 19 March 2009

Google has launched the UK version of its Street View service, which allows users to browse a selection of pictures taken along city streets.

Street scenes in 25 UK cities from Aberdeen to Southampton can be viewed using the service.(...)

Google Maps users can zoom in to a given location and then drag the "Pegman" icon above the zoom bar on to a given street.

(...)

Art partner

Among Google's partners in the venture is Tate, who have worked with Google to integrate precise locations in the UK associated with artworks by JMW Turner and John Constable, which can then be viewed alongside their real-world locations.

UK CITIES ON STREET VIEW

Aberdeen

Belfast

Birmingham

Bradford

Bristol

Cambridge

Cardiff

Coventry

Derby

Dundee

Edinburgh

Glasgow

Leeds

Liverpool

London

Oxford

Manchester

Newcastle

Norwich

Nottingham

Scunthorpe

Sheffield

Southampton

Swansea

York

BBC to put nation's oil paintings online

• guardian.co.uk | Wednesday 28 January 2009 13.07 GMT

 

The BBC is to put every one of the 200,000 oil paintings in public ownership in the UK on the internet as well as opening up the Arts Council's vast film archive online as part of a range of initiatives that it has pledged will give it a "deeper commitment to arts and music".

Mark Thompson, the BBC director general, unveiled the ambitious plans today at a London event showcasing the corporation's music, arts and culture output for 2009 and beyond.
The move may help the BBC get back on the front foot after almost a week of negative headlines over its refusal to broadcast the Gaza humanitarian aid appeal.

A partnership with the Public Catalogue Foundation charity will see all the UK's publicly owned oil paintings – 80% of which are not on public display – placed on the internet by 2012.

The BBC said it wanted to establish a new section of its bbc.co.uk website, called Your Paintings, where users could view and find information on the UK's national collection.

The Public Catalogue Foundation, launched in 2003, is 30% of the way through cataloguing the UK's collection of oil paintings.

In addition the BBC said it was talking to the Arts Council about giving the public free online access to its archive for the first time, including its wide-ranging film collection dating back to the 1950s.
(...)

Further

• The BBC is to put every one of the 200000 oil paintings in public ownership ...
  

Future Internet - Cognitive radio

FP 7 ICT - WORK PROGRAMME 2009-2010 | Challenge 1: Pervasive and Trustworthy Network and Service Infrastructures | Objective 1.1: The Network of the Future  | Challenge 1: Pervasive and Trustworthy Network and Service Infrastructures  

 SeSpectrum-efficient radio access to Future Networks (Call 4)

Next-generation mobile radio technologies–       Cognitive radio and network technologies–       Novel radio network architectures

Overview 

(...)

The 'Future Internet' is emerging globally as a federating research theme. The current Internet architecture was not designed to cope with the wide variety, and the ever growing number of networked applications, business models, edge devices, networks and environments that it has now to support. Its structural limitations in terms of scalability, mobility, flexibility, security, trust and robustness of networks and services are increasingly being recognised world-wide. The challenge is to comprehensively and consistently address the multiple facets of a Future Internet, with energy efficiency also appearing as an important societal concern. Clean slate or evolutionary approaches or a mix of those can be equally considered.

From a networking perspective, this entails a need to rethink architectures such that performance bottlenecks are overcome, a wider variety of service types can be supported, novel types of edge networks such as wireless sensor networks may be integrated, and constraints imposed by new types of media applications such as 3D virtual environments can be supported. Mobility and ever higher end to end data rates also emerge as important design drivers, and so does security and trustworthiness. At network level, a clear challenge will be to provide the Internet with the flexible and ad-hoc management capabilities that have never been part of the 'best effort' paradigm driving the original design. Novel radio and optical systems are important components of this overall network perspective. 

These network infrastructures need to support an Internet of dynamically combined services with worldwide service delivery platforms and flexibly enable the creation of opportunities for new market entrant. The 'third party generated service' is emerging as a trend supporting the move towards user-centric services, as shown by the advances in Service-Oriented-Architectures and in service front-ends as the interface to users and communities. Virtualisation of resources remains an important research driver enabling the delivery of networked services independently from the underlying platform, an important issue for service providers. Advances in these domains also require breakthroughs in software engineering methods and architectures addressing complexity in distributed, heterogeneous and dynamically composed environments, as well as non-functional requirements. 

Networks and service platforms will become increasingly vulnerable as current developments lead to more complex and large-scale heterogeneous networks with massive distributed data storage and management capacity. They need to be made trustworthy which is defined in this context as: secure, reliable and resilient to attacks and operational failures; guaranteeing quality of service; protecting user data; ensuring privacy and providing usable and trusted tools to support the user in his security management.  Trustworthiness needs to be considered from the outset rather than being addressed as add-on feature. Societal and legal issues increasingly impact technological choices. ICT must be developed to ensure a society based on freedom, creativity and innovation, whilst providing security for its citizens and critical infrastructures.

As the Internet has revolutionised the access to multimedia content and enabled collaborative user-generated content, requirements in this field have huge impact on a Future Internet. Advances in 3D processing give rise to innovative applications notably in gaming technologies and in virtual worlds. These place new types of traffic demands and constraints on network platforms, create new requirements for information representation, filtering, aggregation and networking. They drive demand towards novel search tools and raise issues of identity management, ownership and trading of virtual digital objects as well as right of use. These environments coupled with their usage rules drive the research towards a '3D Media Internet' as a basis of tomorrows networked and collaborative platforms in the residential and professional domains.

The Internet is also revolutionising the Enterprise and businesses environments, with the introduction of RFID technologies enabling more automated processes. These open the way towards an Internet of things, where multiplicity of tags, sensor, and actuators provide physical world information enabling new classes of applications combining virtual and physical world information. Open architectures supporting such environments as well as understanding of their impact on the Internet hence emerge as research drivers. Integration with the mainstream business management platforms as well as integration of multiple businesses in collaborative and ad-hoc environments needs to also be taken into account. 

Finally, there is an increasing demand from academia and industry to bridge the gap between long-term research and large-scale experimentation through experimentally-driven research. A fundamental need in this approach is the set-up of large-scale experimentation facilities, going beyond individual project testbeds, which help putting together different research communities in an interdisciplinary approach, anticipating possible migration paths for technological developments which may be potentially disruptive, discovering new and emerging behaviours and use patterns in an open innovation context, as well as assessing at an early stage the socio-economic implications of new technological solutions. For their demonstration and experimentation, proposers under Challenge 1 are encouraged to use the dynamically evolving Future Internet Research and Experimentation (FIRE) facility and to federate their project testbeds within this facility.  

Technologies developed under this Challenge are expected to be tailored to meet key societal and economic needs.

Cognitive access

1

Ofcom today published a consultation on enabling cognitive devices to use the interleaved spectrum on a licence-exempt basis. Cognitive devices detect unused spectrum in which they can transmit. This technical document sets out three mechanisms that might be used to detect unused spectrum, namely sensing, geolocation and beacons.

The consultation which closes on the 1 May 2009 can be found here

(...) 

1.1 Since its launch in 2005, our Digital Dividend Review (DDR) has considered how to make the spectrum freed up by digital switchover (DSO) available for new uses. This includes the capacity available within the spectrum that will be retained to carry the six digital terrestrial television (DTT) multiplexes after DSO. This is known as interleaved spectrum because not all this spectrum in any particular location will be used for DTT and so is available for other services on a shared (or interleaved) basis.

1.2 In our statement of 13 December 2007 on our approach to awarding the digital dividend, we considered the use of interleaved spectrum by licence-exempt applications (i.e. those exempted from the need to be licensed under the Wireless Telegraphy Act 2006 ). We concluded that we should allow cognitive access as long as we were satisfied that it would not cause harmful interference to licensed uses, including DTT and programme-making and special events (PMSE). This could potentially bring substantial benefits to citizens and consumers in the form of new devices and services.

1.3 Cognitive devices can detect spectrum that is otherwise unused and transmit without causing harmful interference. They have the potential to support a wide range of uses, including high-speed always-on broadband and are particularly suited to using interleaved spectrum precisely because significant capacity is often unused at any one location at least some of the time.

===

2

U.K. Takes Global Lead on White Spaces; Commits to Use of Vacant TV Spectrum

Wed Feb 6, 2008 3:43pm EST

 

U.S. Falls Further Behind in Broadband Technology  WASHINGTON, Feb. 6 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In a letter to the Federal Communications Commission, the Wireless Innovation Alliance (WIA) today urged regulators to follow the lead of their British counterparts and allocate TV white spaces to 'benefit the economy and consumers.' In its December 13th Digital Dividend Review, The United Kingdom's Office of Communication (Ofcom) committed to allowing licensed and unlicensed access to TV spectrum freed up by the upcoming transition from analog to digital transmission.  "The United States' position as a leader in innovation and technology hinges on our ability to keep pace with the world," said Brian Peters, a spokesperson for the Alliance, "and today we fall further behind. Ofcom's commitment to realizing the benefits of vacant TV spectrum in the United Kingdom clearly demonstrates that other countries recognize the value and viability of white space technologies and are moving forward without us. Since 2001, the U.S. has fallen from 3rd to 16th in the world in broadband adoption; unlocking the potential of white spaces could be the key to moving back to the top of that list instead of further and further down".

3

spectrumtalk blog | Friday, December 14, 2007 |  UK's Ofcom Proposes Unlicensed TV White Space Devices

Yesterday, the FCC's UK progressive counterpart, released a long awaited report entitled "Digital Dividend Review:A statement on our approach to awarding the digital dividend". "Digital dividend" is Eurospeak for what happens to TV spectrum after the end of the DTV transition, analogous to the FCC's 700 MHz auctions.

Ofcom stated (in peculiar UK spelling) the following points that I strongly agree with:

This decision matters for several reasons:
spectrum is an essential input in the modern world. Its use underpins 3% of the UK’s gross domestic product (GDP) and generates wide reaching benefits for citizens and consumers. But spectrum is a scarce resource, so how it is managed is a critical issue;
the spectrum presently used by analogue terrestrial television is exceptional because it can readily be used to provide high bandwidth services over long distances and into buildings; and
the opportunity to put this spectrum to new use does not arise often. Analogue television has been its main use for many decades, under a framework that dates back to 1961.
... Under the Communications Act 2003, our duties are to further the interests of citizens and consumers and to secure the optimal use of spectrum. Our objective for the DDR is to award the digital dividend in a way that maximises the total value to society from its future use. This includes value both to citizens and to consumers.

These would be admirable goals in any country. 
Then comes the real shocker, the UK counterpart of the FCC's Docket 04-186 proposals for white space/"interleaved spectrum" in UK-speak:

1.34 We propose to allow licence exempt use of interleaved spectrum for cognitive devices. Some licence exempt uses are able to coexist successfully with higher power licensed uses. Cognitive radio is a new technology that can detect spectrum that is otherwise unused and transmit without causing harmful interference. It has the potential to support a wide range of uses, including high speed always on broadband. It is particularly suited to operating in interleaved spectrum, where significant capacity is often unused at any one location at least some of the time.
(...)